


An Awfully Big Adventure

by peachchild



Series: Second Star to the Right [4]
Category: Peter Pan (1953), The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Schmoop, the boys, they struggle with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:57:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachchild/pseuds/peachchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean talks in his sleep, and he doesn't always say happy things. Aidan doesn't like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Awfully Big Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> There is a lovely anon on Tumblr who refuses to come off anon and just be my friend, but they keep giving me plot bunnies by asking me all about the boys so I'm going to be answering them in the form of these little fics!

Dean doesn’t always talk in his sleep. 

The long days - the ones that leave his shoulders screwed up in knots and an ache in his neck from bending over a camera or a canvas - the ones that take as much out of his heart and lungs as from his muscles and brain - those leave him sleeping like stone. 

On Dean’s long days, Aidan doesn’t always sleep well. 

When Dean, a notorious kicker and cuddler, is still, Aidan likes to sleep close to him, his hand right beside Dean’s mouth on the pillow so that he can feel the gusts of his breath over his knuckles. When his dreams are bad - and they are, more often now than they used to be - he sleeps with his forehead pressed to Dean’s, their noses mashed together, so he can breathe the same breaths as his lover. 

Dean, as asleep as he often is, doesn’t complain. When he wakes the next morning to find Aidan close and warm, he runs his fingers through his hair and scratches him awake like a cat, and Aidan stretches his way into his arms and they kiss the day into being.

He still drags Dean around the country, and once Dean surprised him with a trip to Fiji, just because it was a place they’d never been, and they spent the days kicking their way across the beaches, and in the evenings, Dean rubbed aloe into Aidan’s sunburnt shoulders and they watched the sunset out over the water. (And though Dean will never admit it, he has painted those sunsets. Aidan’s found them in the back of his closet, among stacks and stacks of other canvases, other paintings that will never see the light of day.)

At the end of days like those, when there are kisses and laughter, when they make love more than they don’t, in places they probably shouldn’t, and Dean’s skin is brushed golden with sunshine, the blonde in his hair streaked bright, he dozes, sprawled out on his back, and Aidan sucks kisses into his wrists, and Dean smiles in his sleep. 

And then he talks. 

The first time, Aidan woke to a low hum, almost a grumble. It was early, and the sun peered in at them through their window, wondering if they had any intentions of rising yet. He had fallen asleep at an angle on the bed, his upper half sprawled across Dean’s chest, his head tucked under his chin. He could feel a draft against his foot where it had poked from beneath the blanket sometime during the night, and the air conditioner was blowing steadily out against it. He drew it back under the warm safety of the blankets, pulling a face, and dropped a kiss on Dean's chest.

Dean made another sound in his throat, slung his arm over Aidan's back. "Coffee," he hummed. "And a cheese danish please." 

Aidan blinked at him for a long moment, but he didn't say anything else and, in fact, seemed to still be rather completely asleep. 

So Aidan shrugged, and crawled out of bed. He pulled on shorts and a t-shirt and wiggled his feet into his shoes, and greeted the beautiful island morning with a trip to the coffee shop around the corner. He drank a cup of tea and ate a doughnut or two as he strolled back toward their hotel. The sun was shining out over the water, and its heat, even this early, prickled against his shoulders.

When he finally made his way back into their room, Dean was sat in bed, and the lines between his eyebrows smoothed immediately upon seeing him. “Where’d you go?”

“To get you breakfast.” Aidan grinned, holding up the bag and the coffee. “No cheese danishes, unfortunately, but I found you some doughnuts.”

“That was nice of you.” Dean smiled brightly. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“You asked for it,” Aidan said simply, stepping up onto the bed and walking across the mattress to sit down beside him. “And I don’t mind doing things for you.” He dropped a kiss on his sleep-dry mouth. “Did I worry you?”

“Just a bit.” Dean squeezed the back of his neck. “When did I ask for it?”

“This morning. You fell right back asleep.”

“You sure I wasn’t sleep-talking?” 

“I don’t know.” Aidan blinked at him. “Do you often sleep-talk? I’ve never noticed before.” 

“I’ve been told I do, in the past.” Dean shrugged. “Usually about these kinds of things.” He gestured with his coffee. “I guess I once asked Emmett when he was on his way out if he would pick up some toothpaste. I was very confused when he came back with it later that night, since I had a full tube in the cupboard.” 

Aidan pretended dutifully to not be jealous that someone else had heard Dean talk in his sleep. “Well, lucky you, you got breakfast out of it today.”

Dean hummed his gratitude around the doughnut he’d just stuffed in his mouth, and rewarded Aidan with a sugary kiss.

* * * 

Adam likes to joke that Dean dreams about mundane things like toothpaste and coffee and getting taxis and breaking shoelaces because he gets all of his whimsy and wonder out on canvas and on film.

“There’s nothing left up in that brain of his,” he explains. “He drains it all out and then has nothing else to mumble about in his sleep except how he’s done all the cooking and doesn’t want to have to do the washing-up too.”

Aidan always laughs when Adam teases like this, and Dean always pulls a face as if he’s slightly embarrassed about his nocturnal conversations, but that’s only because Aidan doesn’t share the things that Dean says sometimes in his sleep, the words edged with stress, like his vocal cords are strung too tight. 

Aidan always knew that when he returned to Neverland, when he left Dean behind like he so often did, that he was hurting him. It wasn’t that he meant to do it, or that it made him happy to do it. Something always drew him back toward Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, and something always made him feel like he belonged there - until one day, he didn’t, and he belonged with Dean.

He can hear it in Dean’s voice some nights, and some mornings especially, when his eyes are roaming behind his eyelids with dreams, and his fingers curled around Aidan’s wrist are a little too tight. He asks him not to go, too often. He asks him to stay here with him, and to not return to Neverland, and Aidan aches, and gathers Dean against him, cradles his head against his chest and kisses his hair and strokes the lines of his neck until he eases into waking, because when Dean is awake, Aidan isn’t going away, and he doesn’t ever have to worry.

“Do you think I should tell him the things he says?” he asks Adam one day when they’re organizing Dean’s negatives to be put away in the studio. Dean has gone out on an assignment across town, leaving them to stack the boxes of film into the cool storage closet at the back of the building. 

“Don’t you think he knows?” Adam marks a date in permanent marker on the cap of a film canister. “I can’t imagine having dreams that intense and not remembering them.”

“But remembering he’s dreaming about it is different than realizing that he’s telling me all about it,” Aidan points out, pushing himself to his feet and lugging a full box up to push to the top shelf. “I just...” He stares helplessly at the rows of boxes, like they’ll somehow give him the answers he needs. “I want to know if he still worries about that. If he still thinks I’m going to just disappear again. Off to Neverland.”

“He knows that impossible though.”

“I know.”

They don’t speak for a while, letting the rustle of film fill the space between them. Adam rubs an inky thumbprint onto his forehead, peers at him through his glasses. “You should talk to him, if only to get the air clear,” he says decisively. “It’ll make you feel better, at the very least.” 

Doesn’t that sound so very typical, that he would do something for himself, instead of for Dean like he should? Aidan thinks it but doesn’t say it.

* * * 

Aidan doesn’t put off the conversation so much as it just doesn’t come up. Dean sleeps well, and wakes smiling, and Aidan soaks up the joy he feels at being with him, breathes in the pixie dust that glows on Dean’s skin. 

But one night, Aidan gets up to use the toilet, and when he comes back, the bed dips under his weight, and Dean murmurs, “Can’t you stay one more day? I’ll make those pancakes you like.” 

The words ache in Aidan’s mouth like a toothache, and he settles himself across Dean’s lap, leaning down to press his mouth to Dean’s ear. “You don’t have to do that. I’m going to stay forever.”

Dean’s eyes screw further shut, like he’s trying to reconcile what Aidan is saying with what he knows is true. “You mean until Peter comes back for you.”

“He’s not coming back for me. He left me here with you. I _want_ to stay here with you.”

He makes a sound in the bottom of his throat, and Aidan shakes his shoulder, nosing in against his temple. “Dean, wake up. Wake up please.” And Dean does, and peers up at him through the witching hour-darkness, his eyes bright in the glow of the alarm clock on their bedside table.

“Whassamatter?” Dean mumbles, touching his hand to Aidan’s neck. Aidan turns his head to kiss his palm.

“I need to - Just.” He grips his hand, kisses his palm. “You know I’m here, right? That I’m yours?”

“Of course I do. You’re in my bed.”

“Don’t joke.” Aidan leans over to turn on the lamp. They both scrunch their eyes against the sudden light. “I need you to answer me honestly. You know that I’m not leaving, don’t you? That I’m not going back to Neverland, and I’m not going to be anywhere that you aren’t? You know that, right?”

Dean doesn’t speak for a moment, and instead rubs his fingers over Aidan’s hip. “I take it I’ve been sleep-talking?”

“Sleep-begging, more like. You’ve been doing it for a while.”

“Why’ve you never brought it up before?”

Aidan shrugs. 

“Aidan?”

“I just... I thought maybe it would stop, and then I wouldn’t have to think about how I’m not making you happy.”

“Aidan.” Dean has so many different ways he says Aidan’s name, and this is Aidan’s least favorite: the one that makes him feel like a chastised child. “You are making me incredibly happy.”

“That’s what I think usually. The pixies visit you when you’re happy.” 

Dean quirks a smile at that. “I’m all dusty?”

Aidan nods. “But not right now. You’re sad. Because you think I’m leaving. And I’m not.”

“Aidan, you know that there’s more than one way to go away, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you might not be going back to Neverland, but that doesn’t mean you might not fall in love with someone else, or decide to go live somewhere far away from me.” Dean shrugs a shoulder against the mattress, as well as he can with Aidan sitting on top of him like a great cat. “There are lots of ways of leaving that have nothing to do with being a Lost Boy.”

Aidan cups his face in his hands. “So you could leave me.” At Dean’s furrowed brow, he continues, “You could leave me. You could fall in love with someone else - Emmett, or someone - or leave me here and move to the other side of the world, or just not love me anymore. You could do those things.”

“I couldn’t. You’re essential.”

“That’s how I feel about _you_. Why do you get to say forever but I don’t?” Dean doesn’t answer, because he can’t. “And between you and me, I have much more experience with forever. You know, Peter’s been the same age for almost a century. I could have _actually_ lived forever. Instead, I want to spend all the forever I’ve got with you, and if that’s okay with you, I’d like to get started doing that immediately, which means you need to stop wasting time and pixie dust worrying I’m not going to be here when you wake up.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, just slides and topples his way off of Dean, rolling over to face away from him to go to sleep, still in a huff and not feeling any better. 

It helps when Dean curls his arms around him and kisses his ear and whispers, “You’re right. I love you. I’m sorry.” But only a little. 

* * * 

Dean laughs in his sleep.

It’s one of Aidan’s very favorite things in the whole world, and possibly his very favorite thing about Dean. Yes, he still talks sometimes, worries in his sleep over their future, but most often, they have nights like this, when Aidan comes to bed to find Dean already sleeping, and Dean greets him with a laugh.

It’s become easy for Aidan to tell the difference between Dean’s sleep-laugh and his waking laugh. His sleep-laugh is a low rumble, not quite a sound that reaches his mouth. Once, he woke up in the middle of laughing, and the sound abruptly changed, got caught in a high peal of laughter that Aidan was used to hearing. He of course couldn’t help but laugh too, and they lay there quaking until their sides hurt, unsure what they were laughing about.

“I have an idea,” Dean announced over breakfast the morning after their middle-of-the-night argument. “For when I get maudlin and lose all my pixie dust.”

Aidan, still cross with him, lifted an eyebrow over his teacup and doesn’t speak.

“You’ll just have to wake me up. Train me. Like that experiment with the dogs and the bell. Whenever I start talking in my sleep about you leaving, just - kiss me awake or something. Make me realize that I’ve got you, and you’re mine, and you’re not going anywhere. Maybe eventually, it’ll stop the bad dreams altogether, because I’ll just end up thinking, subconsciously, ‘Alright, Dean. Even if you have these bad thoughts, you’re going to wake up to Aidan close to you.’ What do you think?”

“Well.” Aidan put his cup down, tapped it against the counter. “If it’s another excuse to kiss you, I suppose I can make do.”

Despite his very best efforts, when Dean turned that pixie dust smile on him, Aidan smiled back.


End file.
